Six months after a sex scandal ousted Eliot Spitzer from office, the New York governor turned “lov gov” is working in real estate, still with his wife Silda, and wondering how it all went so wrong. Meanwhile, call girls are back in the spotlight — and working harder than ever as Wall Street takes another tumble. Keep reading »
The world’s oldest profession wants to finally go legit — the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU) in San Francisco is trying to protect their hard working membership, the Johns, and the Janes, by asking for the decriminalization of solicitation and prostitution. The city already has a unique First Offender Prostitution Program, which allows people arrested for soliciting sex the option to pay $1000 tuition fee for a graphic sexual health class. Frankly, it also has a pretty poor success rate for scaring attendees back into thinking the best things in life are free, but the ESPU is less concerned with curbing their clients’ desires. What the union really wants is to keep its workers safe, as many sex workers don’t report assaults or rapes because they’re afraid of being penalized for breaking the law with their profession. The ESPU has a bill on the ballot this fall that would decriminalize sex work in the city. They argue that when the pros have to sneak around to handle their business, it makes them exponentially more susceptible to abuse and exploitation. [Newsweek]
So what do you all think: should sex work be decriminalized (in San Francisco or anywhere else in the U.S.)? Keep reading »
Commercial sex workers in India now have the option of purchasing life insurance policies even though their line of work is illegal in the country. When a few sex workers approached the Life Insurance Corporation of India, the company agreed to provide coverage provided the sex workers get routine medical check-ups since they’re at a high risk for HIV/AIDS, and so far, about 200 have signed up for life insurance. The goal is to bring 50 percent of the 1.2 million sex workers under the insurance coverage by the end of 2008, according to the “Committee for Indomitable Women,” and some sex workers hope this is a step toward legalizing their profession. [Medical News Today] Keep reading »
The Frisky just started tooling around on Twitter and a few of our staff have iPhones, which we kind of know how to use. But maybe we could learn a thing or two about putting these handy-dandy technologies to use in business by talking to one of our local streetwalkers. Apparently, the internet has become a useful tool for sex workers to spread their gospel, and, in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal, also do a little public relations spinning. “Sex workers are sentient beings and we are very capable of speaking for ourselves,” Audacia Ray, sex worker advocate and author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration, told Wired magazine. “We are organizing politically and we do have opinions about the ways that sex work could be responded to differently by government and media.” When the Spitzer prostitution ring story broke, sex workers who are actively involved in the community wanted to have their voice hear on the issue, and used devices like the iPhone and programs like Twitter, Google Docs, and RSS feeds to be on top of hearing and responding to the breaking news. When did hookers become so…nerdy? [Wired] Keep reading »
College students in the UK are getting sick of working their butts off and struggling to make loan payments, so more are turning to sex work in order to pay off their debt more quickly (while it may be quick, it’s certainly not painless). The number of students working in the sex industry has risen from about 4 percent in 1999 to an estimated 8 percent today, according to research by Kingston University in London. “What we can definitely say is that as long as student debt increases, so will the numbers of students entering the [sex] industry,” said Dr. Ronald Roberts, the psychologist leading the research. “Since the introduction of tuition fees in 1998 there has been an increase in students undertaking this kind of work.†It’s sad, but true that these women could work a legitimate job for much less, but, as Catherine (not me), who works as a prostitute, said, “I choose to have a job where you can make a lot of money in a few hours and then actually have time to do my uni[versity] work properly.” Study hard! [Times Online] Keep reading »
People holding traditional jobs with company-wide holidays aren’t the only ones who will be spending time at home with their families, sipping hot cocoa, and decorating trees with tinsel this coming week. News 24 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, reports that sex workers usually take a few days for themselves, and many spend holidays with their children. They deserve a break, too, because December is a busy month — one woman who works in the “adult entertainment industry” said she has five or six clients a day during the month. We just hope she uses one of her days off to get tested for STDs. [News 24] Keep reading »
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